Children’s Hospital of Alabama Going LEED

The Children’s Hospital of Alabama is on its way to becoming the first LEED certified hospital in Alabama, thanks to an arrangement with Johnson Controls. Johnson Controls worked with the hospital to develop and maintain a central energy plant.

The 740,000-square-foot expansion and energy plant should save the hospital 10-12% in projected life cycle cost.

“We considered building the utility plant ourselves, but did not want to direct capital dollars towards an additional construction project on top of our ongoing expansion,” says Mike McDevitt, executive vice president, Children’s Hospital. “We realized that instead of becoming our own utility provider, we should look at heating and cooling service as a commodity, and purchase it from an efficient energy provider.”

Third party ownership of the plant enabled Children’s to avoid a $35 million initial capital investment in first construction costs and move forward with construction of the state-of-the-art expansion, while protecting the hospital’s bond rating and debt capacity.

“The margin of savings allows us to redirect funding to resources that help us provide better care to our patients and their families. That’s our top priority,” said McDevitt.